Outfest Los Angeles announces 2013 award winners

Outfest Los Angeles / Outfest Los Angeles

A scene from the documentary "Bridegroom," a documentary about Shane Bitney Crone's plans to marry Tom Bridegroom in California after the same-sex marriage law is passed. Crone's plans take a tragic turn when his partner of six years is killed in an accident and his family bars Crone from attending the funeral.

A scene from the documentary "Bridegroom," a documentary about Shane Bitney Crone's plans to marry Tom Bridegroom in California after the same-sex marriage law is passed. Crone's plans take a tragic turn when his partner of six years is killed in an accident and his family bars Crone from attending the funeral. (Outfest Los Angeles / Outfest Los Angeles)

Jessica Gelt

Outfest Los Angeles has announced the winners of the 31st L.A. LGBT film festival. The nonprofit organization hosts the oldest continuously running film festival in the city in order to foster, support and promote LGBT stories on screen.

The festival, which kicked off July 11, closes Sunday night with a screening of Darren Stein's "G.B.F.," starring Michael J. Willet, Andrea Bowen, Megan Mullally and Natasha Lyonne, among others.

The 2013 awards are grouped in three categories: special programming awards, audience awards and jury awards.

"Bridegroom," directed by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (creator of the TV series “Designing Women”), took the audience award for documentary feature. It previously won the audience award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The film, based on a YouTube video that went viral, examines the subject of marriage equality through the tragic story of a young gay couple that never got to marry before one of them, Tom Bridegroom, died in 2011 after falling off the roof of an apartment building while taking pictures.

The audience award for dramatic feature went to "Reaching for the Moon," made by the Brazilian director Bruno Barreto. The biopic chronicles the 15-year lesbian love affair between the American poet Elizabeth Bishop and the vivacious Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares.